America's Safest and Most Dangerous Cities

[David S]

Among the most dangerous, Michigan placed two in the top four, Detroit and Flint. But Michigan also had two among the safest, Troy and Canton twp. A quick check with the Uniform Crime Report
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/offense_tabulations/table_08.html shows that in 2004 Detroit and Flint had 35-40 murders per 100,000 population, while Canton and Troy had 1 and zero respectively. This is more proof that gun control is not the answer. We have uniform gun control laws throughout the state, so obviously gun control laws do not account for the  difference.

[David S]

The safest cities are all the most well-off cities. I know that Newton, MA is filled with the upper-middle class and also a good chunk of the wealthy. Starting price for a house there is at least $500,000.

Cities like Camden, NJ and Flint, MI are incredibly poor. The link between crime and economics can't be denied and every study shows this.

What studies? Please cite them. I would like to see the data.

[David S]

What studies? Please cite them. I would like to see the data.

http://www.census.gov/

That is the home page of the census bureau. Where is the study that correlates crime to poverty?

[David S]

What studies? Please cite them. I would like to see the data.

Do some research and you'll find plenty. This is a pretty well known theory that has been around a long time.

You do the research. You made the comment. You provide the data.

[David S]

You do the research. You made the comment. You provide the data.

Some other time.

The comment is frequently made in this forum that crime rates correlate with poverty. Maybe its true maybe it isn't, but whenever I ask for studies proving that point I get no answer.

[David S]

The reason I question the assertion that poverty correlates with crime  is that when I plot poverty rates for states vs homicides rates I don't see a correlation. You can check the following data for yourself. When there is a correlation the data points should more or less follow a straight line or at least a curved line. But when I plot this data I get something that looks like a shotgun blast, points all over the place. Now it would probably be more accurate to look at city level or county level data. That takes much more time than even a retired geezer would care to spend. But at least at the state level I just don't see a correlation. Let me know if you disagree.

State,   %  in poverty, Homicide rate
      
      
Alabama   16.1   7.9
Alaska   9.4   8.6
Arizona   13.9   8
Arkansas   15.8   5.6
California   14.2   6
Colorado   9.3   4.6
Connecticut   7.9   3.3
Delaware   9.2   3.2
Florida   12.5   5.7
Georgia   13   7.5
Hawaii   10.7   3.7
Idaho   11.8   2
Illinois   10.7   7.7
Indiana   9.5   6.6
Iowa   9.1   1.5
Kansas   9.9   6
Kentucky   15.8   5.4
Louisiana   19.6   10.7
Maine   10.9   2.2
Maryland   8.5   9
Massachusetts   9.3   2
Michigan   10.5   7
Minnesota   7.9   2.8
Mississippi   19.9   7.7
Missouri   11.7   6.6
Montana   14.6   2.6
Nebraska   9.7   3.6
Nevada   10.5   9.1
New Hampshire   6.5   1.5
New Jersey   8.5   3.5
New Mexico   18.4   9.8
New York   14.6   5
North Carolina   12.3   7.2
North Dakota   11.9   1.6
Ohio   10.6   3.5
Oklahoma   14.7   6.9
Oregon   11.6   2.7
Pennsylvania   11   4.9
Rhode Island   11.9   3.6
South Carolina   14.1   6.6
South Dakota   13.2   2.5
Tennessee   13.5   7.1
Texas   15.4   6.1
Utah   9.4   2.1
Vermont   9.4   2.9
Virginia   9.6   5.7
Washington   10.6   3
West Virginia   17.9   4.4
Wisconsin   8.7   3.4
Wyoming   11.4   2.3


Source :
 
Poverty   http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-_box_head_nbr=GCT-P14&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U&-_lang=en&-format=US-9&-_sse=on

homicide   http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/Cius_99/w99tbl05.xlshttp://www.fbi.gov/ucr/Cius_99/w99tbl05.xls

[David S]

The reason I question the assertion that poverty correlates with crime  is that when I plot poverty rates for states vs homicides rates I don't see a correlation. You can check the following data for yourself. When there is a correlation the data points should more or less follow a straight line or at least a curved line. But when I plot this data I get something that looks like a shotgun blast, points all over the place. Now it would probably be more accurate to look at city level or county level data. That takes much more time than even a retired geezer would care to spend. But at least at the state level I just don't see a correlation. Let me know if you disagree.

[data]

Points in statistical analysis very, very rarely follow anything that actually looks like a straight line.  You need a correlation coefficient (more on these in a bit) very close to either +1 or -1 for that to happen.  More often than not, it does look like a "shotgun blast", as you put it.  It often is not immediately obvious whether or not a correlation exists.  However, there are methods of analysis that attempt to find a method in the madness.

The first is the method of correlation coefficients, which I mentioned above.  A correlation coefficient, as I said above, is essentially a measure of how correlated two variables are.  Given random variables X and Y, the correlation coefficient r is given by



where E(X) is the expected value of random variable X, μ_X is the mean value of random variable X and σ_X is the standard deviation of random variable X (essentially, how far away from the mean most values of the random variable are).  It would take a while to get into all of the details, but it suffices to say that the correlation coefficient is a measure of how related X and Y are to each other.  It can be anywhere between -1 (a perfect negative correlation) and +1 (a perfect positive correlation).  A value r = 0 would indicate that there is no relation between the variables at all.

Now, we can't calculate r as above because that's applicable to two random variables, not to two sets of sample data.  However, if you go through the process of calculating the correlation coefficient for two sets of sample data (the formula is much like the one above), then you would get that r = 0.48: not a perfect correlation by any means, but certainly greater than 0, which is what one would expect the correlation coefficient to be close to were there no correlation between the variables at all.  Uncorrelated random variables very rarely yield sets of sample data with a sample correlation coefficient greater than 0.2 or less than -0.2.

Another method would be the process of hypothesis testing, but unfortunately, I really should be heading to bed, so I'll have to do this section at a later date.  It's safe to say, however, that those data are indeed, in fact, somewhat correlated.  It's not a perfect correlation by any means because there obviously would be other factors contributing to homicide rates (I should also note that homicide rates are also not all the crime that might occur due to poverty), but a correlation is actually there, even if it looks like one big mess.

Gabu
I was hoping someone more talented at statistics than I am would step forward and do the analysis. Is the .48 number based on the data I posted? Can you use hypothesis testing to determine the probability that there is in fact a correlation? 

With regards to using homicide rates as a measure of crime, I feel that in high crime areas crime is under-reported because the residents have learned that reporting a crime does no good. Murders are a different story, because its hard to ignore a corpse. So in my opinion homicide is a more accurate indicator. Also it is probably the most feared crime.

[David S]

Actually, the most interesting numbers that I find are in Texas, among cities with 500,000+.

I note that the only cities in Texas with a significant urban black population are Dallas and Houston and those are the ones at the higher end of the crime range.

However, cities like El Paso and San Antonio, with significant urban Hispanic population, but few blacks, are among the safest big cities in the county.

Moral of the story:  As I have said countless times before, Hispanics in Texas are law and order types and socially conservative.  And this applies to an extent to most other areas in the Southwest and even California (notice LA is not on the list either).

Those who are political watchers should keep in mind what I am saying for the future prospects of both political parties who wish to attract the growing Hispanic population.

Some time ago I was able to find comparable data for homicide rates and % of hispanics in the population for cities over 100,000 people. That makes it fairly easy to cross plot the data and get a graph of homicide rates vs % of hispanics. The data strongly suggests that the murder rate goes down as the percentage of hispanics goes up. I was pleasantly surprised by that result. For non-hispanic whites the trend is the same, but for blacks the murder rate goes up as the percentage of blacks in the population goes up. I don't know how to show the graphs in this forum but I can e-mail the spreadsheets with the graphs if anyone is interested. Its in the Works spreadsheet format.

[David S]

I'm seeing a pattern here, anyone else?
Most dangerous cities;

Camden, NJ is number 1, 53.7% black
Detroit is number 2, 81.6% black.
Atlanta is number 3, 61.4% black.
St. Louis is number 4, 51.2% black.
Gary, Indiana is number 5, 84% black.
Washington DC is number 6, 60% black.
Hartford is number 7, 38% black (majority of the population).
etc. etc. (Source: Morgan Quinto)

The least dangerous city is Newton, MA - 88.1% white
Followed by Brick Township, NJ - 95.8% white
Then Amherst, NY - 89.3%, etc. etc.

Are you suggesting that being black causes crime?

that is exaclty what the retard is suggesting, yes.

Nobody wants to be racist but there is a very strong relationship between the percentage of blacks in a community and the amount of crime. If we can't accept the facts then we have little chance of finding solutions.

[David S]

I'm seeing a pattern here, anyone else?
Most dangerous cities;

Camden, NJ is number 1, 53.7% black
Detroit is number 2, 81.6% black.
Atlanta is number 3, 61.4% black.
St. Louis is number 4, 51.2% black.
Gary, Indiana is number 5, 84% black.
Washington DC is number 6, 60% black.
Hartford is number 7, 38% black (majority of the population).
etc. etc. (Source: Morgan Quinto)

The least dangerous city is Newton, MA - 88.1% white
Followed by Brick Township, NJ - 95.8% white
Then Amherst, NY - 89.3%, etc. etc.

Are you suggesting that being black causes crime?

that is exaclty what the retard is suggesting, yes.

Nobody wants to be racist but there is a very strong relationship between the percentage of blacks in a community and the amount of crime. If we can't accept the facts then we have little chance of finding solutions.

But 'blacks make cities worse crime wise' is not a fact. at all.

What is a fact is that the higher the percentage of blacks in a community, the higher the murder rate. Now you can say that a correlation does not prove "cause and effect". That is true, but the correlation is I think undeniable.